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Iceland Day Four | Seljalandsfoss, Skogafoss, Dyrhólaey & Jökulsárlón

Friday, 21 October 2016

Day four of our trip in Iceland saw us leave our amazing Airbnb and prompted us to travel to some great sights including Skogafoss and Jokulsarlon!

We all had a hearty breakfast of scrambled egg, avocado and spinach and then also had a pot of Skyr for seconds! After packing up all of our belongings, we said goodbye to our home and drove off into the wilderness of Iceland.

The glaciers and icebergs at Jokulsarlon

About 30 minutes in to our drive, we were greeted by some lovely Icelandic ponies! They were very curious and loved a bit of attention, although I think one tourist though they were too curious, as one pony tried to eat someone's hoodie!

After petting a few horses, we were again off on our adventures. Our next stop was to be Seljalandsfoss, one of Iceland's most impressive waterfalls. The water at the top of the waterfall free falls 60m before hitting the pool of water at the base of the waterfall, giving people a unique chance to go behind the waterfall itself!

Our next waterfall stop was Skogafoss, which was very impressive! It was quite tall and because it was sunny when we visited, there was a spectacular rainbow! Legend has it that trolls are buried beneath the rocks at Skogafoss, and sometimes on a dark night com out and rest by the waterfall.

ALSO, I found out that Skogafoss was used as a location in Thor: The Dark World! HOW COOL IS THAT?!

I managed to find the end of the rainbow! But to my disappointment, there was no pot of gold... maybe the trolls took it!

The end of the rainbow!

Our next stop was Dyrholaey which is another national reserve located near Vik and sits on the Icelandic coastline. There is a lot of folklore around this area, one being that a monster lives underneath the hole that has been made beneath the cliffs, but the monster has said to have disappeared since a landslide happened there about 100 years ago.

Another myth is that these rock formations were once large trolls who tried to wreck a passing ship, but it took them longer that they thought and when day light broke, they turned to stone, creating the rock formation that we see today.

As we continued our travels, we found vast fields of lava rocks which were mostly covered with a bright green moss. I instantly thought of the Disney film Frozen as the little trolls in the film look like the moss green lava rocks (I think that was Disney's intention, well done Disney). As we drove round the island more, you can really see how most Icelanders believe in the myths and legends that they were told; the landscape is magical and filled with mystery!

Our next, and final stop for the day, was the incredible Jokulsarlon and the Black Diamond Beach! This really was incredible, it took all of our breath away when we drove round the corner and saw this in front of us!

The small (or in some case quite large) icebergs are formed when the heat of the Summer melts away parts of the glacier and they cascade down into this lake. Now that Winter is approaching, I would think that this place would look a whole lot different! The bergs were a dazzling blue and you could see stripes of black in them from volcanic eruptions; so they're a walking (or floating) map of time!

We all then walked about 2 minutes to get to the beach opposite the lake that was filled with smaller pieces of the icebergs that have been washed up on the shore. Some of the pieces of ice were cloudy and some were clear; I was told that this had to do with the pressure at which the ice was formed.

This really was an amazing day! The long car drive was definitely worth it! Let me know if any of you guys have visited these places before and what you thought of them!